


The Ice Princess / Turn the Radiator On

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, Exes to Lovers, F/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28038006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Bellamy and Clarke drink hot chocolate together on a cold day in December.Or: a traveler searches for home.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42
Collections: bellarkescord advent calendar





	The Ice Princess / Turn the Radiator On

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season!
> 
> This fic was written for The Bellarkes Discord Advent Calendar 2020. The second half of the title comes from "There Is a Boy Who Never Goes Out," by The Lucksmiths, which was a partial inspiration for this fic. Brainstorming help re: holiday ideas for the first half of the fic came from justbecauseyoubelievesomething, spacekrulesbians, and thelittlefanpire on tumblr.

The traveler arrives on the first night of the annual Christmas bazaar. He has journeyed a long way, and he is weary. Night settles early at the end of the year, and even the main roads are obscured by layers of new snow, so he’s been guiding himself by the stars. They glint above him in secret patterns, across a sky so vast and high and black that it seems to dwarf even the distant mountain peaks. He tips his head back to take them in, and exhales a cloud of night fog that slowly dissipates into the cold.

Eventually, he sees the castle, a tall shadow atop one of the smaller mountains just ahead: his first sign that he is on the intended path.

He rubs his hands together and blows into the center of them, generating warmth between his frigid palms, trying to soothe his aching fingers. Then he readjusts his knapsack on his back and keeps on going. The sound of his own footsteps, plodding along the road, crunching against crisp new snow and thin crackling ice, create the only disturbance to the quiet: discrete and frozen sounds through the silence. He stares down at his boots, and looks up only now and then, at the rising turrets of the palace on the hill.

When he reaches the top of the incline, he stops to rest, and to look down at last into the valley below. The village huddles there, a spot of warmth and light in the clear, cold winter darkness. Its small multi-colored houses cluster close together, no discernible pattern to the streets and yet an orderliness to them, a comforting rightness in their design. They are separated only by the winding river, frozen over now and sparkling in the starlight, that stretches from one end of the valley to the other.

The brightest lights come from the center of the village, a perfect line of light that seems precisely placed to guide the traveler down the mountainside, into the valley, and through to the other side.

This light, he sees, when he reaches the village at last, radiates from the Christmas bazaar. He stands at the entrance to the village, beneath the welcoming arch, and takes it in: line upon line upon line of wooden booths, each with its own unique display, stretching as far as he can see. Strings of fairy lights in green and red and gold connect the booths, and twine and curl around the bushes and trees in between, lending such a brightness to the scene that, but for the deep chill of the air, the night itself seems banished from the town. Couples stroll together down the aisles, holding hands; whole families stop together to examine each vendor's wares. Most of the booths are staffed but some sit empty, while their owners step out to chat with friends or examine the various inventions of their neighbors. The traveler is briefly startled when something bumps against his leg—but when he looks down, he sees that it was only a small child, in the middle of a game of tag with one of his friends. He picks up a handful of snow and forms it into a hasty snowball, throws it at the girl, but she dodges it easily and laughs. The boy almost tumbles into the snow, but catches himself, and runs on.

The traveler does not laugh, but he does smile, and he watches the children at their game until they disappear around the corner and out of sight.

As he starts walking down the center aisle, he breathes in deep, the sharp night air now laced with the warm scent of spices, undercut with the smell of newly baked bread. The path between the booths has been well trampled by villagers' feet, and it shines with an icy sheen beneath the traveler's boots. He has to be careful, so that he doesn't slip.

At the first booth, he finds a variety of nutcrackers, in the form of little soldiers, standing in perfectly straight lines upon their shelves. They are painted in every color of the rainbow: red, yellow, green, blue, and other shades for which names have not yet been discovered. Each one has a slightly different smile drawn across his face. Some are cheerful, some sly—others seem to be laughing—but every single one has an identical white beard, the exact shade of the sparkling white snow.

Next, he encounters a booth of beautifully wrought glass snowflake ornaments, which hang from the ceiling on the thinnest of strings, so that they seem to float delicately through the air. Each one is unique: some in the shape of simple stars, some so complex that the traveler, though he stares and stares, cannot seem to determine where the ornament starts and where it ends. Unthinking, he reaches out a hand to touch the sharp glinting edge of the one nearest him—then draws back, afraid to draw the ire of the artist. But she smiles at him, and tells him to go ahead. He runs one fingertip along the corner of the snowflake. Set into motion, it flashes rainbows against the side of the booth and onto the snow. Curious. He pulls away in surprise, and then, a moment later, leans in to examine the glass more closely. Is it picking up a reflection from the strings of fairy lights? He cannot tell. But one of the rainbows lands against his hand and he can feel the warmth and brightness of it on his skin.

Farther on, he passes a booth selling large, hand-knitted, woolen blankets, and these he runs his hands across without hesitation or guilt. They are piled on top of each other, thick and plush, in deep blues and reds and greens, checked and plaid and striped, each one so soft that even a light touch makes him feel as if his whole body were bundled up in their comforting warmth—he almost considers buying one, but the vendor seems to have left his post. The traveler notices him only at the last minute, jumping and stretching to be seen behind the towering stacks.

With a great deal of self-control, the traveler passes on to the next booth: a miniature version of the village itself. This one is constructed of gingerbread. He passes his gaze over gingerbread houses, with little icing doors and icing windows, and roofs thatched with licorice, and gingerbread carriages pulled by gingerbread horses, a gingerbread school decorated with gumdrops and candy canes, gingerbread trees and green gumdrop bushes—all populated by gingerbread men, women, and children. They wear icing vests and jackets and hats and skirts, and carry blue and red and green candy canes. Hungry as the traveler is, he does not even consider eating one. The scene appears nearly as alive as the human village, and he's loathe to bring even a hint of destruction to the little town.

To distract himself from the rumbling in his stomach, he continues on, soon reaching the end of the aisle. Here, the river bisects the bazaar, a wooden bridge arcing over it to allow travel to the other side. Some villagers, though, appear to prefer to skate across. The traveler watches them cutting patterns across the ice, twirling and spinning around and past each other in patterns that remind him of dancing. He gazes upon them from the height of the bridge for a long time, entranced.

On the other side of the river, he discovers a booth selling candles, where he pauses for a while, lost in a memory. His mother used to put candles just like these, long and thin and tapered at the top, on the family Christmas tree at home. Theirs were always white, but the candles here also come in red and green, and even dark blue, and the traveler is so entranced by them, that it takes him several long moments to realize they are not sitting on the shelves but floating serenely in the air.

He jumps back, shocked, and the vendor turns a page in the book he is reading—causes it to turn, rather, with a flick of his finger—and laughs, and doesn't look up.

The traveler continues on. For some time now, the deep scent of cinnamon and orange and clove that he has grown accustomed to has started to strengthen and, drawn to its source, he finds himself at a booth serving glasses of hot chocolate. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the most popular destinations at the bazaar. While the vendor concerns herself with other customers, he takes his time reading the menu, though all of the options seem to be secret codes, the precise meanings of which he doesn't understand.

"If you're looking for something spicy, I'd recommend the Orange Antler," a voice behind him says, and the traveler turns abruptly, frowning at the unexpected intrusion.

A woman is standing just a half-step behind him, staring, not at him, but at the menu, as if she had not spoken to him just a moment before. Something about her is different—not in the same way that he is different, but she stands out nonetheless from the rest of the villagers and visitors. Her outfit, perhaps, gives her away. She's dressed in a long, white, fur-trimmed coat, with a white fur hat and matching white gloves, and tall black boots that do not look as if they've ever seen a spot of dirt or grime. Her hair falls in loose blonde waves over her shoulders, and her eyes, when she flicks her gaze to him again, shine a crystalline blue, sharp as the sun on clean, new snow.

"Or if you'd prefer something traditional, the Happy Elf is just hot chocolate and marshmallows," she adds. "It's also great. She puts in so many of them that you can't even see the drink itself underneath. Like a little mountain of—is something wrong?"

He'd been frowning, he realizes, without meaning to. The oddity of someone speaking to him again, after so long relying on only himself.

"No—no, it's fine." He shakes his head to clear it, and tries to smile. "Just—surprised."

"Well, good. I thought maybe you didn't speak our language." She steps closer, as if sharing a secret, and pitches her voice a tone lower. "Have you ever been here before?"

He shakes his head. "First time. You?"

The woman laughs, and the traveler crosses his arms against his chest, hunches his shoulders up toward his ears like a defense. It was a fair question, he thinks: whoever she is and wherever she's from, she's not of the village. She stands out with a radiance not even the sparkling ornaments or twinkling lights, or the sharp diamond stars above, could touch.

"Native soul," she answers. "Here—"

She twines her arm through his arm and pulls him forward, so that he stumbles and has to jump over his own feet. The line is moving, then, and he didn't even notice, and he's still not sure what he wants to buy, if anything at all. When they reach the front, the woman smiles and orders two Holiday Travels. She pays for them with a handful of bright gold coins, before the traveler can manage more than a word of protest.

"Shush." She hands him the first drink, a tall, crystalline glass filled to the brim with a warm, dark hot chocolate, smelling lightly of spices, with a single cinnamon stick and a handful of marshmallows on top. Then she takes the other for herself. Her arm is still curled around his arm. "Merry Christmas, stranger."

"Merry Christmas," he echoes faintly, so caught up in the light citrus scent of the woman's hair, and the warmth of her, so close against his side, that he does not even remember to thank her.

They step just off to the side of the main path, their glasses so full that any attempt to walk and drink at once is clearly futile. The stranger takes a tentative first sip of his—and his eyes widen, and the woman beside him laughs again, a merry and gentle laugh like music notes.

"Good?" she asks.

"Best thing I've ever tasted," he answers honestly, and tries a second sip. The drink is deep and rich, with only the faintest undertone of spice, lightened by the fluffy, sweet marshmallows on top. It’s just hot enough to suffuse his insides with warmth but not enough to burn his tongue.

"You look like you've traveled a long way," the woman says, as they start walking again.

"I have. So far that I've lost track of the miles."

She hums lightly, and turns her gaze forward once more. Her chin points up, and he follows her eyes, up past the village and to the mountain that rises up above it and the castle at its peak.

Now in the light of the village, the traveler sees its true form: a palace made of shining, crystalline ice. The faint blue tone of the ice gives the castle a ghostly air, as if it were not quite true: rather an apparition watching over the valley, or a vision half-remembered from a dream. Two turrets rise to either side of the main entrance, above a balcony that would give the perfect view of the village below. The area immediately to the side of the castle is walled in behind a thick barricade of ice. 

"And have you found what you're looking for?" the woman asks.

The traveler shakes his head. "Not yet."

The woman's hand finds his hand and squeezes it tightly, as if offering reassurance, a promise that the long journey, still not at its end, will not be in vain.

"What's the most beautiful thing you've seen on your travels?" she asks, her voice lighter now, as she steers them back toward the line of booths on their right.

"This comes close," he answers. "Your village, and all of this—" He gestures, as well as he can with the glass in his hand: the ornaments and the art and the food and the people, the snow and the lights.

"Well now you're just trying to flatter me." She pretends to sound stern, but she's grinning. "But maybe you're right. I think the village is the most beautiful, too. People talk about the castle, but—" 

She stops, the traveler next to her, at a display of snow flowers. Delicate, ghostly blue, like ice in twilight cast, they bloom from drifts of crisp, dry snow. Their wide leaves spread out atop each other, providing a carpet for clusters of tiny flowers, as unique and distinct as snowflakes, and as ephemeral.

The woman sets down her glass and reaches out with her free hand, glancing her fingertips along the edge of one of the leaves. "Cold," she murmurs. "I can feel it through my glove."

She is steadfastly watching the plants, the reflection of the fairy lights along their leaves, and the traveler is just as steadily watching her. He puts his glass down, too, and the small thud of sound it makes seems the only disturbance. The rest of the chatter and the noises of the bazaar around them fades away.

"What is it like in the palace?" he asks.

And she laughs, and cool puffs of frozen breath escape from her lips, but she doesn't argue, or tell him that he’s guessed wrong. "Just as it looks. The entranceway, the grand hall, the dining room, the bedrooms, all made of ice. Cool in the summer, frigid in the winter. The walls and the floor pick up the sun in the morning and shine so brightly that you forget they are frozen, beautiful but cold. Frost patterns decorate the windows, and in the coldest parts of the year, snow blows in through the door whenever it opens, and piles up along the edges of the rooms. The best part of the palace is the gardens, on the other side of the wall—only rumored, of course."

"Of course."

"Snow flowers grow there—many more of them than here, and more varieties: purple flowers like wisps of smoke from a fire on the coldest day of the year; and ferns with thick, frost-encrusted leaves; and snow bells, with little round white flowers, which grow taller than all of the other plants but still bend down to meet them. And of course there are icicle trees—their branches make the most beautiful music when the wind blows, like chimes."

Even after her voice trails off, the traveler does not speak, in case she should want to tell him more. But her expression settles, turns to something distant and soft. After a long moment, she looks up at him again. She's not quite smiling, but he can read the fond look around her mouth, in her eyes.

"I don't know about the palace," he says, "but I'd like to see those gardens. If they're real."

"If they're real. Did you know you have little snowflakes, right here?" She pulls off her glove, then reaches up and traces the freckles across his cheeks and nose. "And fairy light in your hair?" she adds, brushing aside an overgrown curl. She lets her touch linger as she runs her fingertips around the shell of his ear.

The traveler reaches up abruptly, and grabs the princess's hand with his hand, and holds it tight. She inhales sharply, a quiet ice-edge breath. Doesn't let go of his gaze.

Around them, without either of them noticing, a gentle, light snow begins to fall.

Bellamy steps out of the Greyhound last, the end of a weary line of travelers. After the stuffy interior of the bus, the sharp edge of winter hits as an unexpected relief, disorienting but welcome in its clarity. He stands back to let the other passengers slip by. They are all in a hurry. He sees them off to their families, their taxis, their cars, and then he watches the bus itself pull away from the curb and slowly rumble off. The brown fumes of its exhaust disturb the night air just like the crystalline clouds of his own breath do.

A line of lights set into the overhang of the bus station casts a weak glow over the concrete and the edge of the road. From this sanctuary, he can see the parking lot, swiftly emptying, shadows upon shadows created by a few sparse streetlamps, and he can hear, behind him, a blanket of city-sound: traffic, and horns honking, the blare of a siren in the distance. It's not quite nine in the evening, but by this time in December, the thinnest and shortest and darkest days of the year, any hour after sunset has the deep chill clarity of midnight, and he feels very small beneath the obscure and clouded sky.

He adjusts the weight of his backpack—with his sleeping bag attached to it, he knows he looks more like a hiker, a transplant from the wrong time and place—and pulls his phone out of his pocket. Desperate now to find a place that feels like home.

_Just got in. Can I crash for the night?_

He hasn't spoken to Clarke in a couple of months, hasn't seen her in nearly six. He's not expecting a response right away. But he's barely slipped his phone back into his jeans when it buzzes again.

_Sure. Do you want me to pick you up?_

Her place isn't far, so he says he's fine to walk. His legs are aching and restless anyway. He needs the time and space and the sidewalk beneath his feet.

He texts again when he reaches her building, and she buzzes him up. Every detail, distinct and clear as the night itself, feels layered over with the past, with every time he's pulled open the heavy front door, breathed in the anonymous empty lobby smell, climbed the narrow staircase with its thick block steps, up to her door. 4A, it reads, in bronze letters that don't match the curled black font used at every other entrance. He's always wondered about that, and never asked.

Bellamy knocks, and Clarke opens the door right away.

She's cut her hair shorter, so it falls now barely past her shoulders, and she's not dressed up like when he saw her at the Jahas' Fourth of July party last summer, but in all other ways, she looks exactly the same—more the same than he expected, in a way that takes him, as always, by surprise. Most people don’t know this version of her, the soft and private side of her: her white fuzzy slippers and old, gray ARKADIA sweatpants; her father’s washed-out UVA shirt. But Bellamy does. The sides of her hair are pulled back from her face, her skin pink from the stuffy indoor heat. The radiator’s on too high again. She smiles at him, honestly, softly, leans on the door as she holds it open, as if boneless with relief.

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" she asks, but she might as well be saying _I missed you_ , there is so little interrogation to her tone.

He shrugs. "Let's just say it was a last-minute decision."

"Mmm." Her eyes narrow. "I sense a story there. Come in, come in." She waves him over the threshold and he enters, and once the heavy door has closed behind him, and Clarke has locked it again, she throws her arms around him and hugs him suffocatingly close.

He has to hold her just as tightly, for balance, unsteady on his feet. Soft strands of her hair tickle his nose. The familiar scent of oranges from her shampoo wafts over him.

She hangs on to him for such a long time, squeezing him extra tightly at intervals as if testing the strength and truth of him, that the last memories of the crisp and bone-deep cold of the outdoors leave him, and he's awash instead in the particular strain of warmth and light that comes from homecoming in winter.

"I missed you, too," he says, when she pulls back. Up to her, he thinks, if she'd like to interpret the comment, the added _too_ , as a taunt or a joke. But his smile is genuine. He meant it, precisely as he said.

She hesitates, gaze flicking across his face, her own expression narrow with uncertainty. Lets her hands run down his arms. Squeeze his hands, her small hands strong and familiar, too, in his.

"Do you not have _gloves_?"

Bellamy laughs, shocked and pleased, at the judgmental note in her voice. Just what he expects and what they both need. He's something to fix now. She is the one to fix him. Having roles to play makes reunion easier.

"Forgot to put them on," he answers, as she frowns at him and pulls back. She doesn’t answer, but the pout, and its accompanying shake of the head, say enough. He watches her stomp off, in her fuzzy slippers, toward the kitchen, takes the opportunity to drop his backpack to the floor and look around.

Clarke usually goes all out for the holiday season, but this year her Christmas decor is restrained. She has a simple pine wreath on her door, and a string of blinking multi-colored lights around her window, bright and merry against the black, reflective sheen of the glass. But that is all. Before he arrived, she had clearly been bundling herself up on the couch: he notices the extra pillow, the knitted blanket piled up in the center cushion, the mostly-empty mug of tea on the coffee table next to a facedown paperback book.

The first and only Christmas they lived together, she had stockings pinned to the walls, and a collection of snow globes on the bookshelf, and a confusion of holiday cards attached with snowmen magnets to the fridge. He had to untangle three boxes of lights, and taste test four batches of semi-burned gingerbread cookies. Her gift to him was an ornament for their tree, a carefully wrought ceramic snowflake she made herself. The edge of it has chipped off now, but he owns it still.

"I notice you're having a more subdued Christmas this year," he calls, as he carefully moves the coffee table closer to the wall.

"Yeah, I know," Clarke answers, the first word punctuated with a frustrated groan. "It's sad, isn't it? I don't even have a tree."

Twenty-two years old, Christmas at the Griffins. He pauses, sitting back on his heels, his sleeping bag rolled up and resting on his knees, and lets the memory sink deep. He'd gone out with her and her father to a tree farm on the edge of town, where they spent an hour debating the merits of two incredibly similar pines. Around them, the short December afternoon merged into a long December twilight. The bitter violet of the sky vaulted above, bleeding into shades of orange at the horizon.

The crunch of new snow under their feet. The sharp, sweet scent of pine.

"I just haven't had the time," she continues. "And at this point, it seems a little late, you know?"

"Mmm," Bellamy answers. He means the noise as a general sort of assent. From the kitchen, he can hear the sound of cabinets opening and closing, the bubbling of liquid boiling. He unrolls his sleeping bag and smooths it out over the hardwood floor, in the space between the couch and the table. His backpack he leaves discreetly next to the armchair. Belatedly, he unlaces and pulls off his boots, and stashes them next to Clarke's disorganized shoe pile, by the door.

Beneath his jacket, which he hangs up on the coat rack, he's wearing several layers, for travel: a t-shirt, a long-sleeved blue shirt, and an unbuttoned red plaid shirt on top. But Clarke's apartment is warm, so he shoves his sleeves up to his elbows, and even ditches his thick woolen socks, too. He's halfway back to the couch when Clarke reappears from the kitchen, holding a mug in each hand. Thin curls of steam rise up from each. A green striped candy cane sticks up out of the right hand mug.

Hot chocolate, Bellamy thinks, even before she steps close enough for the smell to waft his way.

"Bellamy," she says, even and steady, with a pointed glance down at his sleeping bag. "Couch surfing means that you sleep on the _couch_. Not the floor."

He shrugs his shoulders up toward his ears, buries his hands in his pockets, and makes a low grumble of a sound. The heat that rises to his face, he tells himself, is from the close, artificial heat of the room. "I wasn't going to just move your stuff," he mutters. "Seemed presumptuous."

"You invited yourself over with ten minutes' notice," Clarke answers. "That's already presumptuous." But she's smiling, more affectionate and amused than annoyed, and doesn't press the issue further. She slips around the end of the couch and leaves one of the mugs on the coffee table, and takes the other with her as she sits down on the couch again. She curls her legs under her and pulls the edge of the blanket up toward her waist

The sleeping bag makes a slippery, slithering noise as Bellamy sits cross-legged on top of it.

Clarke gave him the hot chocolate without the candy cane, but as soon as he picks up the mug, he notices she's added an obscene number of marshmallows to the top. He smiles, slight at first, then wider as he takes his first sip. Clarke was never a good chef but she makes hot chocolate like no one else: somehow richer and darker and sweeter, the warmth of it at his palms and seeping down through his chest that much more complete.

"What's that look for?" Clarke asks.

He wasn't looking at her at all, but down at the floating white snowballs in his drink. The question startles him. So does the uncertain half-smile on Clarke's face, the expectant way she is staring at him.

"What look?"

"That look." She points at him with her pinkie, doesn't break eye contact as she takes a slow sip. "Like you're thinking of something funny."

"No—no." He shakes his head, like shaking off a memory or a dream. "I was just thinking. This reminds me of this... this story I used to tell Octavia when she was little."

"What story?"

He'd thought, naively, that his simple explanation would be enough. But Clarke's gaze is still steady on him; he can feel it even when he looks down at his knee, the edge of the sleeping bag and the side of the coffee table, next to him, can feel it even through the gauzy half-remembered remnants of the story itself, flickering through his thoughts. He glances at her again. She's stirring her hot chocolate with the candy cane, absently, her cheeks shading a deeper, rosier pink from the steam.

"Just this... little fairy tale thing I made up for her," he says. The words feel awkward and clunky, an embarrassed admission. He tries to shrug it off, but Clarke just nods, waiting for him to go on. "I used to tell it to her every Christmas. It was about this guy, this traveler, who wanders into a magical village in the middle of winter, during this Christmas market, bazaar-type-thing. Then he meets this princess—this ice princess."

His mug of hot chocolate feels too warm now in his hands. He settles it down in his lap, but doesn't let go.

"Ice princess," Clarke echoes, not a prod to keep going, but only a soft and curious refrain.

"Yeah. She lived in this castle made out of ice, that sat above the village. Anyway, every time I told it, the traveler found different magical items in the market. Like once he found one of those ceramic Christmas villages, but all the figurines moved on their own. Another time, he saw a real fairy moving the fairy lights on the trees. Or there might be wind chimes made of real icicles that sang when the breeze blew. Stuff like that." He shrugs.

"Sounds magical."

He can't read her tone anymore; it sounds distant to his ears. But when she catches his eye again, she smiles, the soft and encouraging smile that disarmed him when they first met, and does still—the smile he likes to think is just for him.

"That was the idea," he says, gruff to cover the unpleasant, awkward feeling building up in his chest. "All of that would be different each time, but when the traveler meets the princess—that was always the same. Even the dialogue. Octavia used to have it memorized." The corner of his mouth quirks up, as he remembers her quiet voice overlapping with his. To hide it, he takes another long drink, then sets his mug aside on the coffee table.

"So what happened?" Clarke asks. She can't be cold, but still she pulls her blanket up more securely around her. "The traveler meets the princess and... what? I'm assuming they hit it off. Does she take him back to her castle?"

Bellamy laughs, a sincere and warmhearted sound. She's as into the story as Octavia was as a child. He would not have expected that of her. "I don't actually know," he admits. "Octavia would always fall asleep right before they kissed."

"But they were going to kiss?"

"It's a fairy tale, Clarke, of course the roguish, mysterious traveler and the beautiful, charming ice princess would have kissed. But that’s all I know. I never had to figure out what came next."

He trails off, uncertain. It’s true that he never came up with a conclusion, not even for himself. He'd always stop when he noticed Octavia had drifted off to sleep, her eyes closed and her breathing slow and even, her favorite stuffed bunny held tightly to her chest. Then he'd tuck her in properly and turn off the light by her bed and tip toe out of the room. The fairy tale village stayed behind, like the remnant of a dream. 

Clarke hands him her mug, half-empty now, and the candy cane nearly entirely melted, and Bellamy sets it on the coffee table with a thin, hollow clink. He watches as Clarke stretches out along the couch. She arranges the blanket so that it covers her bare feet, pulls it up to her chest like her own soft cocoon. Without thinking, Bellamy settles too, leaning his shoulder against the side of the couch so that his face is even with her face.

"I guess," he admits, hesitantly. "I guess I always assumed she'd go with him."

"On his travels?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Clarke reaches out and slips her fingers through Bellamy's hair, gently traces the shell of his ear. She's staring at him with her eyes wide, biting the corner of her lip. He's close enough to see the flecks of deeper color in the light crystal-blue of her eyes.

"But like I said," he adds. "I never really...got to the ending."

Clarke hums. "Well. Endings are overrated anyway."

He reaches up to take her hand, warm palm in his and fingers twined, and at the gesture her smile widens. There, now, a genuine tenderness to the way she looks at him. Nothing held back. The radiator clangs and hisses in the background, and when Bellamy breathes in, he catches a hint of forest-scent from the wreath hanging on the door. 

Clarke pulls him closer. She tucks his hand, still in hers, safe against her chest, drapes her other arm over his shoulder. Her fingertips graze against his back. Sharing breaths with her feels familiar, and easy: the warmth and safety he's been seeking all along.

He leans in, bracing himself on the couch; she holds him steady with her hand at the back of his head, fingers stretching up to tangle his hair. The kiss starts as an inhale, then builds. It grows like a fire, once guttering, now brought back to life, the comfortable intimacy between them as the spark.

As always, being with her feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find a moodboard for this fic on my tumblr [@kinetic-elaboration](https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/637348520128626688/the-ice-princess-turn-the-radiator-on).


End file.
